An opinion shared by Siddharth Chaturvedi, Founder and MD, Boys and Machines.
Buckle up to start your journey in building a business from scratch. The culture of start-ups is very central and flows directly from the founder. A comparatively smaller team set to achieve the same goals and align to make a difference in a sector of their choice. The startup trend in India is not a new thing. The purpose has diverted but the business values and beliefs remains the same. Corporate practice in India grew after the dotcom years at the turn of the century.
Coming specific to the automotive sector, the pre-owned car market has been unorganized for decades. Cars used to sell through word of mouth and the buyer was about 50% unsure of quality or value he is getting out of the deal. We all relied on the known mechanic to check out the car before nodding on the deal. It was high time to organize this gold mine of a market to cut down middleman and provide value to customers with the right quality at the right price.
Having the right state of mind and believing in yourself are the pillars to make big things come alive. Patience is one of the strong foundations that propels the power of compounding in action. Sometimes, you become overwhelmed when things may not work out at the start.
While starting Boys and Machines, it was always a challenge to strike a fine balance between keeping your expenses low for longer sustainability and to hire the best possible team to ensure the back bone of the organisation is solid. At the end of the day the biggest reason for failure of an organisation is either higher expenses or a weak team to deliver steady results and manage the load. As our business model uses rented properties, it was painstaking to figure out the right showroom locations at reasonable prices. The process of choosing the right locations for your business can become lengthy and you have to make many decisions along the way that can either make or break the new organization tight on cash. Hiring the right people for different departments is even tougher. Because you have limited resources and the decisions become heavy. It is the team that builds the organization and the strain to get the team right needs patience and determination.
At the beginning days, we were into a lot of planning. We gave impeccable attention to detail on every little task and that gave us the confidence that things might work out. The planning phase is very important to gain confidence. When you put your thoughts on paper and do research, confidence flows! A team that understands your vision and are ready to give the sweat to make to convert that vision into a mission and materialize it, confidence builds up. These two aspects can help you not to lose patience while starting up your organization.
Now, it can happen that the results you are actually getting is away from projected expectations. And believe me, you will never be satisfied as your hunger to grow also increases with rising sales. We strive to grow every day as a team and the only game plan that we have is to give our 100% as a team every day and face, tackle, and over-come challenges that show up. Hard work beats talent when talent doesn’t work hard.
When running a competitive high-stake business like luxury pre-owned cars, keeping patience is of prime importance. Losing patience just results in narrowing your mind which makes it difficult to find solution. The higher the stakes the more patience you need to have as it gives you a stable mind to assess the situations and come out of them.
Business is all about keeping an open mindset and work with your eyes and ears open. Grab opportunities and tackle difficult situations. One tip is to don’t get overwhelmed on either sides of the spectrum. When the business is not materializing as expected, put down your head, figure out what is going wrong and work out solutions. When the business is booming, keeping your heads straight focus on maintaining the momentum. Let the power of compounding do its work. You just need to ensure you are doing the right things at the right time.
To all the newbie entrepreneurs who are ready to take the challenge of starting-up and making a difference, be patient your time has come. You are already set out to achieve great things when you made the decision of starting-up. Get your home-work done by doing a thorough research on the business you are planning to scale. A very good practice that gives you good knowledge is to work under someone who is into same industry to understand the things which you would have to face once you start your own venture. The work will help you understand the business better and you can learn things that can multiply results.
Secondly, keep your expenses minimal. You may churn out some cash right from the start but the cash outflow should be minimum to maximize re-investment opportunity. Again, the compound effect works well! Let it do the hard work for you. You just want to ensure that the business has enough cash when required.
And last but not the least, give your 100% to the venture you are set out to start-up. Hard work is a necessary and everyone should go through the struggle phase. This will make you strong and give confidence to make better decisions when the time comes and huge resources are at stake. All the very best!